Miguel FERRER CALZADA was born in Soria, a Spanish city located on the Duero River in the east of the autonomous community of Castile and León, in 1933.
Entrepreneur in the hospitality industry. Son of a Catalan father and a Castilian mother, in a family of republican ideas repressed by Franco’s regime (father shot in 1936, uncle exiled). He spent the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period in Burgos.
The death of his mother leaves him and his brother as orphans.
They are placed in hospices where they have a hard childhood. At the age of 12 he starts working as an apprentice in a furrier’s factory and later in restaurants in Palencia, Valencia and Madrid.
By chance, he finds his uncle who worked in Barcelona, who will help him to work as an apprentice in the important hospitality firm “Establecimientos Sala S.A.”, owner of the Baviera, the Granja Royal, the Canaletes, the Navarra, the Milán, the Oriente, the Baviera in Madrid… He will go through all their establishments and all the positions: dishwasher, cook’s assistant, waiter, maître, head waiter, head buyer and finally as director. Eager to run his own business, he begins his entrepreneurial phase by opening L’Atlàntida 1 in 1967 in the Catalan town of Vilassar de Mar. Then follows the rental of the Doyen Restaurant, also in Vilassar de Mar. Years earlier, he had married Ascensión López, with whom he had two children. In 1975 he opens his second restaurant, L’Atlàntida 2, with pizza as the star dish, the only one of its kind in the Maresme region.
Later, in 1990, he opens La Botiga de L’Atlàntida, a take-away food establishment with charcuterie and wine cellar. In 2006 he opens a new establishment with innovative market cuisine with a terrace and menus for special events, also in Vilassar de Mar. In 2017 his children opened a new successful store in the Mataró Parc shopping centre. Throughout these years, the Ferrer family’s Atlàntida Group has received several awards and recognitions for its gastronomic quality and has become a benchmark restaurant in the Maresme region. Miquel Ferrer Calzada died in 2011.
His children continue his project, these establishments are now called L’Atlàntida in Vilassar and also in Mataró Parc.
